Music / Mudhoney

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Mudhoney is a Grunge band formed by former Green River frontman Mark Arm. Along with Nirvana, Mudhoney is the main Trope Codifier of Grunge. Despite this they received little popularity or media attention besides their college radio hit "Touch Me I'm Sick". However Mudhoney has a strong grassroots fanbase, and they've even managed to record eight albums without any mainstream success. They continue to perform live, despite the waning of Grunge's popularity.

Long-Runner Line-up: Type 1 + Type 2. The original line-up of Mark Arm, Steve Turner, Dan Peters, and Matt Lukin, lasted 13 years (1988-2001). Lukin retired from the band and was replaced by Guy Maddison, who has remained with the band since then.

Mean Character, Nice Actor: Despite the angsty lyrics and the snotty, aggressive vocals, many interviewers have pointed out that Mark Arm is a very amiable and friendly dude.

Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness : A pretty solid 6. With a couple songs, like "Crankcase Blues", going down to a 4. And a few, such as "FDK (Fearless Doctor Killer)", going up to 7.

Self-Deprecation: The Performance Video for "Suck You Dry", where they're playing a sparsely attended "Ten Years Of Grunge" event at a small bar in 1998 (the song was released in 1992). The audience is mainly sitting by the bar looking bored, while the one apparent diehard fan in attendance pogos and slam-dances in front of the stage by himself.

Shout-Out: They're named after an Exploitation Film. Though the band have said they'd never actually seen the movie, they just noticed the title on a marquee for a theater that was screening other Russ Meyer films all day.

"Tales Of Terror" is named after a Hardcore Punk band Mudhoney were influenced by (Mark Arm's former band Green River had covered the Tales Of Terror song "Ozzy").

The title of "FDK (Fearless Doctor Killer)" is a nod to Bad Brains' "FVK (Fearless Vampire Killers)" - and by extension, the movie of the same name.

At the end of "When Tomorrow Hits," you can hear Mark softly intone the words "that's the lowdown." This is most likely an acknowledgment that the riff the song is based around is a slowed-down version of an old Wiresong.

Similarly, Nirvana's goofy cover of Kiss' "Do You Love Me?" replaces the line "all the money, honey that I make" with "all the Mudhoney that I make."

Springtime for Hitler: When they were asked to write a song for a specific scene of the movie With Honors, they offered an instrumental outtake, but the studio insisted they submit a song with lyrics. So they added some very repetitive throwaway lyrics to the song, gave it the Title-Only Chorus of "Run Shithead Run", and sent in both the instrumental and vocal versions, figuring this would result in the instrumental being used after all. Instead, "Run Shithead Run" appeared complete with vocals both in the movie and on the soundtrack album... However, the band also noted that they never got another soundtrack offer again.

Toilet Humour: The untitled fifteenth track on Piece Of Cake consists of the band playing a simple repeating riff for 30 seconds, with fart sound effects (possibly achieved via Whoopee Cushion) played in time with the music. The final fart sound effect then segues into the start of "Ritzville".

Visual Pun: The artwork to Piece Of Cake includes a cake slice sitting in a urinal... Thus, a literal "urinal cake".

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